August 23, 2011

Perry is the first graduate of Texas A & M to govern Texas. When he was a freshman, in 1968, the student body looked much like him: white, male, determinedly rural.... At A & M, Perry ran the winning campaign of his friend John Sharp for student-body president. In response, Sharp got his friend elected one of the campus’s five “yell leaders”—male cheerleaders. Perry considered being a yeller the higher office. A typical yell is: “Squads left! Squads right! / Farmers, farmers, we’re all right! / Load, ready, aim, fire, boom!” During tense moments in a football game, yellers grab their balls and shout, “Squeeze, Aggies!”

I was inclined to disbelieve that ball-squeezing thing. But I Googled it. There are some strange American folk traditions, apparently. But... why is this in an article about Rick Perry? Why merge that image with him? There's some psychological manipulation going on here!

Squeezing is only figurative, and the yell leaders do it when the football team is attempting to kick a field goal. Before the ball is snapped, they run down to the end zone and kneel down on one knee, abreast of one another with one hand over their crotch, waiting expectantly for the kick. The "squeeze" is a figurative gesture, nobody really squeezes. It's all done in good fun--a bombastic notion that self-induced pain would affect an outcome on the field. People in the stands do it also, even girls.

What the New Yorker (and the rest of the lefty media) fails to realize is that the masculine cowboy image is a drawback only in the deep blue liberal bastions on the coasts. Everywhere else it is recognized as what built this country in the first place, and has been severely lacking of late.

Crunchy Frog wrote: What the New Yorker (and the rest of the lefty media) fails to realize is that the masculine cowboy image is a drawback only in the deep blue liberal bastions on the coasts. Everywhere else it is recognized as what built this country in the first place, and has been severely lacking of late.

Just to echo: The New Yorker might as well kick John Wayne in the nuts. What is wrong with those people? I guess we know who they think shot Liberty Valance. ______________Full disclosure: my wife subscribes and I enjoy the cartoons.

I first met Rick Perry in 1985. He was a Democratic freshman state rep, straight off the ranch in Haskell, Texas. He wore his jeans so tight, and, umm, adjusted himself so often that my fellow young legislative aides and I used to call him Crotch. Even among state representatives, even among Texas Aggies (graduates of this cute remedial school we have in Texas), Perry stood out for his modest intellectual gifts. Hell, he got a C in animal breeding. I have goats who got an A in that subject. But lack of brains has never been a hindrance in politics.

To the extent, folks that write for The New Yorker know anything about colleges in Texas, its likely to be about UT Austin. A&M has a culture of its own, barely understood by most Texans. Of course, Perry could be elected quite easily without a single vote from anyone who reads The New Yorker.

The (David J Phillip) photo of Rick Perry chosen by Le Monde's print edition to illustrate Sylvain Cypel's article on the Texas governor's joining the Republican race has (needless to say) Perry and his image on the screen behind him looking like a maniac.

The opening sentence of Sylvain Cypel's article suggests that Rick Perry is an egotist, politically speaking at least, who is delighted with the degradation of America's debt, since that will (quelle horreur) hurt Barack Obama and since that in turn will benefit Perry's election prospects.

As a graduate of Texas A&M, I can speak to the issue of testicle clenching. The video posted here shows a particular, peculiar outfit of the Corps of Cadets - not the yell (cheer) leaders, which is what Rick Perry was. This ball squeezing would be more in line with the larger population of various odd military-class traditions, which, if The New Yorker was so inclined, would likely make a fascinating article in itself. I never saw the white-clad yell leaders squeeze their balls.

Perry went ahead with the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham despite bona fide concerns about his guilt. After his execution, when it was starting to become more clear that Willingham was actually innocent, Perry sabotaged the official inquiry.

The quote above is supposedly from a focus group member regarding Perry's possible candidacy for President.

Now Althouse is, in this post, trying to get ahead of the issue.

She likes Perry. So she frames any questioning of his decisions and conduct in this matter as at the level of squeezed-testicles and male cheerleading-- unjustified slime-throwing by the "media elite".

Begala's got a lot of, ummm, Crotch to call Texas A&M a "remedial school" considering we're (I'm an Aggie) in the top 20 for various types of engineering, especially industril, where we're in the top ten.

I'm guessing he's a Lib Arts grad...the type of guy who wouldn't know a quality school unless it has fancy stationary.

In as little over a year the left can quit blaming Bush because they will have the newly elected President Perry for everything from insomnia to reversing the fall in sea level so expertly instituted under the Obama Administration.

In response to Seguin: Paul Begala went to UT, so he has a natural animosity towards Aggies. Funny story: when I was at UT (law school), the student government was revived, and in the first election for student body president a campaign was mounted for "Hank the Hallucination," an Eyebeam comic strip character created by Sam Hurt. Hank the Hallucination won the election in a landslide of write-in votes (mine included). The fellow who came in second, and won the subsequent runoff, was Paul Begala.

The problem for the libs here is that strong and masculine is likely to sell well this coming election. Our economy is in bad shape, and that may be attributed by some to Obama's weakness (and feminism).

Who are Americans going to trust? The President who got us into this mess? Or a strong male figure who can tell us that if they elect him and enough Republicans in the Senate, we can undo all the damage the Dems have done to the ecomy and the country over the last 4 1/2 years?

Yes, Aggies are weird. But Ivy League educated elites got us here through their belief in their ability to think for the rest of us. Epic fail, to the tune of trillions of dollars of deficit and millions of jobs.

My point is that Dems, the left, etc., are worried about Perry (Palin and Bachmann) for very good reason. They are trying to get a handle on how to take him down, and so far are failing.

Or a strong male figure who can tell us that if they elect him and enough Republicans in the Senate, we can undo all the damage the Dems have done to the ecomy and the country over the last 4 1/2 years?

My memory too, but he also was a football star, etc. One of the most athletic Presidents, which is why the Chevy Chase skits were so misleading - this was the guy that the SS had a hard time keeping up with on skiis.

The liberal media has a hysterical reaction to all things testosterone. For the males, it goes back to their lack of success on the playground in elementary school and they will never change without a major psychic upheaval. This is a very rare occurance. The good news is that the majority of voters are on to them.

I expect either puzzlement about or put-downs of Aggies to increase as long as Perry is in the spotlight. And, yes, the yell leaders still "squeeze"--watch them closely whenever a place kick (FG or PAT attempt) is made.

Ummm, well, none of the people that actually read the New Yorker (as opposed to lining their bird cage with it) are likely to vote for Perry anyway. And nobody else gives a flying fornication what they think. So maybe they should just go back to cheerleading Obama's vacations.

Guess researching what you post about doesn't appeal to you, eh? The Governor of Texas doesn't have commutation authority, he/she can only grant a 30 day reprieve. The Texas board of parole must intercede and recommend commuting a death penalty, but if they don't it's adios muchachos no matter what the Governor does.

Now what Julius, what other smears can you come up with ... he's gay, no he's hyper-masculine, no he's ... What, pinhead?

Texas A&M, the state's first public institution of higher education, was opened on Oct. 4, 1876 as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, and at that time the "A" and "M" initials were used to abbreviate the name components. When the institution gained university status in 1963, the "A&M" representation (no periods, no spaces and with an ampersand) was incorporated into the official name in deference to the institution's history and rich traditions, but the individual letters no longer explicitly stand for anything.

Gerald Ford was an ALL AMERICAN guard when he played football for Michigan--Perhaps the best athlete who was ever the POTUS--Saturday night live nothwithstanding--Sad when the public only knows what late night comedy shows put out as satire.

In the 1960s and '70s, Texas A&M transformed from a small, regional college to a major research university. Texas A&M today:--Has 50,000+ students on campuses in College Station, Galveston and the Middle Eastern country of Qatar--Conducts more than $630 million in research annually, ranking behind only MIT and Berkeley among universities without a medical school--Has an endowment of more than $5 billion, ranking fourth among U.S. public universities and tenth overall--Was ranked second last fall in a Wall Street Journal survey of employers for providing graduates who are academically well-rounded and prepared for the workforce--Ranks in the top ten for National Merit Scholars--Has average SAT scores of 1210, with more than one quarter of incoming freshmen each year being first-generation college students--Has more than 800 student-run events, clubs and organizations, including the Big Event, the largest one-day community service project of its kind, with more than 15,000 students participating

Prof. Althouse, as much time as you've spent in Austin and as much contact as you've had with the University of Texas and its partisans, I'm surprised you didn't already know about the Aggies and their testicles.

@ Julius: The governor of Texas, be he Rick Perry or anyone else, has no power to pardon those on Death Row. His power is limited to the granting of one temporary stay. This is in the Texas state constitution, and cannot be changed without amending that document. And that's not going to happen, because the way that limitation got written into the Texas constitution was that there was a "pardons for pay" scandal involving Democratic governor Ma Ferguson back in the interwar period of the early 20th Century: Texans don't want our governors to have broad pardon powers.

So the event that you attribute to Rick Perry wasn't attributable to him.

The entities charged by our state constitution and laws with determining this individual's guilt or innocence and the proper punishment for guilt do not include the governor. But those entities were indeed responsible for Willingham's trial and many, many subsequent years of appeals and habeas corpus challenges. It is to them that your argument ought be addressed.

If you're looking for people upon whom to attribution causation to a result, you certainly would have to include all the judges of the SCOTUS, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, several intermediate Texas appellate courts, the trial court, the trial judge and jury, and the Texas Board of Pardons & Paroles. Each of them was far more involved in Mr. Willingham's fate, even if you believe -- as I most emphatically do NOT -- that he was innocent.

So basically, you're full of crap, promoting some nonsense that you've probably been fed by someone else without bothering to investigate its plausibility or even its possibility.

You're a troll, in other words, so this will both begin and end our conversation. I've already wasted more time on your nonsense than it, or you, deserve by writing this much.

When the institution gained university status in 1963, the "A&M" representation (no periods, no spaces and with an ampersand) was incorporated into the official name in deference to the institution's history and rich traditions, but the individual letters no longer explicitly stand for anything.

So you could go to College Station and major in A if you wanted to? Could you first go to community college, get an associates' degree in T, and then transfer?

I would think that the democrats might think they are the "testicles" being squeezed by Perry and the Aggies, but then I thought that dems are eunuchs, so there must be a different reason this annoys dems.Yeah, maybe it's that the Aggies have something down there to squeeze, which makes the dems envious?

I've live in Texas all my life. Voted for Rick three times. My niece just graduated from A & M. I have never heard of this and now feel a little creepy. My daughters went to THE University of Texas. I just thought Austin was weird

The New Yorker good grief. I've read it for close to sixty years. Long Winded Lady, Audax Minor, Big and Brassy, Christ it was a view into a world that just possibly existed. My parents read about horse shows in the twenties, college football, the price of bootleg whiskey, as if they didn't know to the nickel. Jesus, they did profiles of Tammany guys. You'd wait for it weekly, always had a laugh or two, Chas Adams, Peter Arno.Now what is it, a top shelf Nation with ads. They haven't published a funny cartoon in twenty years. What can you say, the left has killed it's own wit. You thinkRoss would spend half a minute on Bill Maher? Forget it, throw it away, it's lousy cover to cover.

I realize your post about A&M's current status was likely cut and paste from somewhere else, but TAMU does have a College of Medicine. At least, enough of one to convince the State Board of Medical Examiners as to my fitness to hold a medical license. It is a unique large state college, most state schools are distinguished in some way but A&M has a far more conservative culture than others, probably due to its relative isolation and the large role the military has played in its institutional history. It is still a very tradition-oriented place, with the kind of rabid alumni loyalty, to the institution and to each other, not often seen outside of SEC football schools.

I'm a faithful New Yorker reader. I'd like to think I have some kind of colored glasses that shield me from the slant in their political reporting, but probably not. Their hit pieces are done with considerable subtlety and malice and become part of one's thinking. They're very good at it.....You could take those same bare facts and make Perry into an uncomplicated fellow who knows his mind and cheers for what's right, but then it would not be a New Yorker piece......I read that damn put down of Bachmann in last week's issue. She seems to be leading a balanced, useful life and some of that is thanks to her religious beliefs. A belief in God inspires things other than antipathy to homosexuality and Darwin. Her wish to adopt all those foster children came from her religious beliefs. Isn't that more significant fact about her than her belief in intelligent design.

@Darren, the College of Medicine was part of the university when it was new, but for many years has been a stand-alone member of the A&M System, equal on the org chart to Texas A&M and with no more affiliation to Texas A&M than any of the other 10 universities or seven state agencies.

If the purpose of attending college is to find a mate who can enhance your prospects for success, why would anyone choose to attend a college that did not begin admitting the fairer sex until after Perry had presumably graduated? Co-education destroyed the most highly esteemed of all Texas institutions, the Aggie joke.

This Republican field and the media reaction to it is just tying you in knots, isn't it Althouse? A couple weeks ago you were ecstatic at the prospect that women were doing so well in the Republican field, demonstrating, according that Republicans just aren't that concerned about outward signs of masculinity. Now, as Rick Perry is portrayed as a macho buffoon, you sneer at the pansy New Yorker because they don't understand that grabbing one's crotch and being a Macho Man is a positive to most voters.

@Darren, I know the culture very well. In fact, if you haven't been back lately, I encourage you to do so. You might be surprised at the changes. Plus, the new biotech corridor that's being established on the far west campus, between the vet school and Riverside Campus (with the new Health Science Center facilities in the middle), is really impressive.